Whackjobs-R-Us

I'm giving my dog her afternoon treat of part of a container of Beneful Prepared Meals and without thinking, after I scoop out her little portion, I stick the spoon in my mouth to mouth it clean. Yeah, yeah, whatever. Grow up. It's just food. And the Beneful brand actually looks pretty appetizing. There's real veggies in it. The works.

So, after laughing softly to myself at the fact that I ate some of her food and realizing that, at least as far as this brand goes, it's actually not bad tasting at all, I begin to wonder (like any good writer would) if I were in a situation where there was nothing else, would this stuff sustain me? It wouldn't be ideal, of course, it's for dogs, but if push came to shove and some craziness happened that didn't let me have access to regular food, could my pooch and I share and get by? So, I go looking on the web and clearly I'm not the first person to think this thought because Google fills in the question before I've typed the first 4 words. I click the first listing and I see some very sensible answers concerning nutritional content and differing opinions on wet, canned food versus kibble because of hydration issues and the like. All very mature and adult, and then there comes the comment that throws me. Someone indicates having tried it "for what it is to come". I keep reading and more and more comments to the tune of inevitabilities and eventualities and... I scroll back up and sure enough the logo at the top of the forum is a stylized human head wearing a big double canister gas mask. I'm in a "prepper" forum. FFS...

A few days before, I had reason to want to know when marriage licenses of any kind first started being issued in the U.S. I pop into this site and it starts off looking like it might be informative until you scroll down just a tad and start seeing shit like this:

And I'm like, great, I'm in yet another whack-job website. It happens all the time!

Why are they always at the top of the lists? Doesn't that usually mean that these are the most searched sites? What gives? Do people really want to search crazy-people sites when they have random questions rather than get their info from more reasoned minds? I know you might be thinking, "Well, Wrey, if you think about it, both of those questions do seem rather primed to pull up some sketchy sites," to which my answer is is, forget Adult Content filters on my web browser. The odd boob or peen doesn't freak me out in the least. I want a whack-job filter to filter out sites that contain certain words or phrases. I don't want to see sites that contain the words "end of days", "the coming of the fall", "liberals are...", "conservatives are...", "make sure your shelter is at least 20 feet underground and..."

When you start asking whether animal food can sustain you in case of emergencies or when marriage licenses were first handed out, or when the first spoon was used, or when the pyramids were erected,you're bound to get into the crazies.

If you stick to normal everyday questions, you're less likely to stumble on those. Keep your nose clean :3

I totally get what you mean, but just fyi, it isn't very far fetched. I have several friends who (and their families) lived on dog food for several years during the recent civil war in my country. This is a lot of what 'humanitarian aid' is composed of (if it isn't actually rotting). So they made stews with it and such. It's pretty revolting because you can usually just get the cheapest stuff.

Something that occurred to me the other day that's semi-related: If comments sections had automated spell-checkers that would disallow any comment with more than, say, 10% of the words misspelled, the internet would be a much more polite place. Takei's Theorem: You can either teach someone to hate, or to spell, but not both.